bands

an retrospective anecdote about "my musical career" pmpl

Most of "my musical career" has been as a solo studio artist, a sound engineer more than a productive musician. I have been involved with several groups, for practical reasons I shall use the term 'bands' to refer to these.

The first was a trio of schoolboys who didn't know how to play guitars, throwing our lot together. A band consisting of three guitar players one of whom, Shannow, was able to (ahem) sing and strum at the same time. The singer dominated, it was his lyrics and rhythms we used although half the material was instrumental. We were called Oubliette from the Jim Henson movie 'Labyrinth' it means 'a place to put people to forget about them'. Our stuff was dark as fuck, teen angst and coming-of-age puberty tunes. With machine nightmare vision. We had little technical skill and when we did record 'our set' direct to tape the levels were terrible. Thankfully very few copies exist. Lyric sheet to follow.

After this I set aside my guitar for a few years to deal with art school, while the guys went on to produce half a dozen sweet and professional studio albums far beyond my level of ability and talent. They finally took it to the live arena as Red vs Blue but Shannow announced his decision to "quit the music industry" and disappeared after the first and very successful gig (the venue offered them a regular fortnightly set), which I recorded. All that came years later.

I picked up Jester Interactive's Music2000 software for the Playstation 1 and many years passed, during which I was sent by the Jokeshop (ahem) Jobcenter on a government training scheme called New Deal for Musicians run by Community Music Wales. My contact for that is Paul Gray who was at one time the bassist for the Damned! NDfM was excellent, not only did I learn self-promotion and marketing (hey, you're reading this, it works!), I got a lot of insight into local professional studios at the time and a small budget for advancing "my musical career" (I love that term it reeks of promise and bullshit) that was largely spent on funding local music studio's. In South Wales "local music studio's = rock /metal".

Prior to this I had already produced what I still believe to be my best output yet, raw emotion inspired by the breakdown of a deep and passionate relationship and with free traveler festivals, during both of which a lot of shamanic spirit allies were experimented with, one becoming analogy for the other, in an album entitled; 'the forest'.

At the beginning of the millenium I did some minor roadie work with rock outfit Clipper who have recently (2012) reformed! In the years following this I was involved with two musical based projects with other people, one of which was a lot more productive than the first, as well as my own stuff. Naturally I was exploring diverse musical styles, while wanting to produce jungle drum&bass, was actually creating welsh techno and classical inspired electronica. The drummer from Clipper and a member of Oubliette have now got it on to do jazz-dubstep live act very worth seeing called the Red Shark Sound System.

Bite the Wax Tadpole aka Headfry collective consisted mostly of techno-obsessed Ryman ("I want to use music to take the world apart and put it back together again") and myself, with massive input from Juju & his mc505 and necessary smooth jazz influence of Captain Kirk. We also had a huge hip-hop element and lend of machines from a streetwise-as-fuck Angel who had to disappear because the cops and the mafia and psycho individuals were all catching up with her too damn fast. She got me to a few gigs including the massively influential Skindred previously Dub War, whose studio I later worked in with their drummer Ginger thanks to NDfM.

Additional to this was a mate who we were trying to get clean of smack, whose ethic was "techno techno techno". Fucker robbed us but we probably had it coming for letting him in the first place. We regularly ate out of skips because it was the only way to afford cider, dope, minidiscs & electric, the four major elements of our lifestyle at the time. And dog food; Rymans amazingly understanding girlfriend Why looked after the dogs while we were lost for days at a time in headphoneland. Most of the crew eventually left the city due to frustration with it being such a negative place, a black hole for the soul, and because of too much hassle from cops, crime gangs and the middle-space of both-at-once caste. If we'd worn the ubiquitous city chav/blad gang colours of tracksuits and hoodies instead of dredlocks we'd have probably been sorted on all fronts.

In tandem to this, on the rare days off from the craziness of 24/7 open door policy totally dedicated to the religion of music sessions with a street gang, I was part of an outfit of pretentious art college lecturers and political activists called Panopticon. We/I wrote 2 tracks which took me a hell of a lot of encouraging the others to get them to be productive at all. These guys both had other agenda's. A lot of our energy was about the secret police watching everything we were doing, which was actually going on at the time - one of the guys was an agent! using it a a front to break into the underground scene that my shitty apartment apparently represented to them due to an endless stream of visitors - despite everyone calling us paranoid to pretend the world is a nicer place than it is, because they largely have zero experience of reality beyond paying bills and watching tv. Lyric sheets to follow.

Eventually the ramifications of involvement with Panopticon caused me to leave the city. But not until I had done some busking with car battery powered keyboard genius and fellow Blues Brothers fan Russ and a few other street performers, one street jam session during which matey on car battery powered electric guitar and myself on bass, we had the citizens of Zooport literally lining up to put spare change in our collection pot. It was legendary.

Garazia! I need to mention Michael, a fellow Grateful Dead fan. He is by far the most talented guitarist I have ever jammed with. He was over here from Czech if I remember correctly, working for money with a Polish outfit. He left uk to visit his girlfriend in Ireland, and sadly we lost contact when my cellphone was stolen. I have his alcohol laden recordings somewhere... We have both traveled Europe and understand well that all over Europe, metal is the voice of our generation.

I spent New Year 2007(?) learning with Polish spiritualist and punkrock drummer Corey who later if the photographs and text conversations are to be believed achieved her life goal of teaching Slipknot how to drum properly; the album they were working on at the time got critical acclaim for its drums and that's because of love, magick and Polish spirituality.

Before I left Zooport I was for a while the replacement/step-in bass player in an industrial/rock group called Acid Tongue, who were proper rockstars and have since been signed, which they deserve for their dedication. I didn't quite gel with the guys primarily because when they told me to play it exactly the same way as the previous bassist, they didn't find it new enough and when they told me to improvise with it, they didn't find it familiar enough to what they were used to from the last guy. We all put it down to experience.

Sharing with their energies, rock scene, feeling an unfamiliar self-assuredness common to rockstars, put me on a spectrum to have involvement with, but sadly never to jam with, basket-feather-owl, who like me had a red guitar and a blue bass (remember the movie Matrix?). She sells gig tickets for the local rock scene. She definitely deserves a mention here for the diligence she has put into making Zooport city music scene what it is.

The folk recordings I did with Vine and the deep soulful folk sessions that we never recorded, including of my dad surprising the hell out of us all by being a guru on tabla drums, also need mention, for they shaped my approach to music - and that it comes from the heart, more than any other experience. I've traveled between south Wales and the South of uk from Cornwall to Brighton being a folk player but that is a whole different story.

Since then I have advertised looking for musicians wanting to form a band and although there are a few around with similar interests, most of them are too disfunctional to make it on the days or nights when we have actually been able to agree to meet up. Its a shame but I am guided by Great Spirit to continue to develop in the direction of a solo studio artist.

Seems to be the way.

Update 2012: Polish guitarist Rob and I have formed Chaocracy / Area Zero One in wild west Wales. Early days yet... interested additional parties are lining up to jam with us.

Update 2015:Progress is slow because Life is fast in the wild west.We have changed the name now, not that its about a name its about the music but it helps as a label and a theme to have something everyone feels comfortable with. We both have some more experience and focus. Brood

Update 2018:Nothing came of that. Parents of young kids and everything else of Life made it an optimistic aspiration rather than a reality. I did some solo project soundtracks in my spare time. I moved house. Put the studio into storage. December this year I discovered a Analogue-to-USB mixer in a charity shop and realised hat a lifetime of experience of knowing what I'm talking about outweighs sales pitches. This basic bit of kit is preferable than any expensive digital device which is going to make the same fashionable corporate style music everyone else is uploading free to the internet and not getting much anywhere with. See what 2019 brings.